Old Wine and New: Occasional Discourses

by Joseph Cross

XIII.

CONTEST AND CORONATION.[[1]]

I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight; I have finished my course; I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day; and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.—2 Tim. iv. 6-8.

I go back eighteen centuries and a half into the past, and find myself in a grand old Syrian city. About midday I ride out at a western gate along a great highway looking toward a picturesque group of mountains. Straight before me towers the white head of Hermon, like that of a patriarch amidst his children. On my right and left are groves and gardens and smiling villas, a paradise of verdure and beauty, as far as the eye can reach. On this road marched Abraham two thousand years before me, and Jacob returning from Padan-Aram, and Jonah going to Nineveh, and all Israel in chains to Babylon. Enough, surely, in these objects, to stir the dullest brain and kindle the coldest heart. Thus occupied, my attention is suddenly arrested by a troop of horsemen riding briskly toward the city. Their leader is a young man, of rather low stature, with keen black eye, and stern and determined aspect. A single look is sufficient to assure me that he is no common man, and here on no common errand. It is the tiger of Tarsus, in fierce pursuit of some of the lambs of the Good Shepherd. A few Christians from Jerusalem, driven out by persecution, have come hither for refuge; and Saul, with full authority, self-solicited, is on their track, "breathing out threatening and slaughter." You know the rest. Blessed be the lightning-stroke that consecrated what it smote, and made the bold persecutor the bravest apostle of the Crucified!

Thirty years later, in the world's metropolis, I visit the Mammertine Prison adjoining the Forum. Who is this, sitting on a block of travertine, with a tablet on his knee, a stylus in his hand, and a little ewer-shaped lamp at his side? As he looks up a moment from his writing, I see something in his face that reminds me of the young officer at the head of that vengeful expedition. He is indeed the same man—the same, and yet another. Toil, hardship, privation, imprisonment, and cruel treatment of all kinds, have wrought sad changes in his physical frame. Bent, bald, almost blind, though not more than sixty-five years old, I should hardly have recognized him without a word from his warder. One of Nero's victims, he waits here calmly for the hour of his release by the sword. Already doomed perhaps by sentence of the tyrant—it is not certain—neither he nor his keeper knows—he has undertaken another letter—most likely the last he will ever write—to Timothy, his "dearly beloved son." Abounding with godly counsel and encouragement to an intrepid and zealous young bishop, it is full also of the most inspiring utterances of Christian faith and hope. Among other incentives to diligence and fidelity, he adduces his own experience and expectation, and these are his words of cheer: "I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight; I have finished my course; I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day; and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing."

Not all called to be ministers and martyrs of Christ, we are all called to be his constant and uncompromising followers; and in the humblest sphere of Christian discipleship there is demand for the utmost activity and zeal, and in many cases for the heroic martyr-spirit commended to the bishop and exemplified in the apostle. Let us see, then, what instruction we can get from the text.

The first thing here to be noted is the apostle's calm contemplation of his present position: "I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand."

In a popular work of fiction two characters are taking final leave of each other. The one is full of heart and hope; the other, deeply dejected and despondent. "Farewell," is the last sad word of the latter—"Farewell! your way leads upward to happiness; mine downward—to happiness also." Such helpless resignation to the inevitable, in one form or another, we may all have witnessed. Few things are more common in human experience; and the dying, however much they have loved life or dreaded death, yield themselves at last to what cannot be averted or avoided. But in the apostle's language there is something more than this stolid and sullen submission. There is cheerful faith and buoyant hope—a conscious triumph over all the evils of life and all the terrors of death.

I had a friend very ill. For three days his life hung in doubt with his physician. When he began to recover, he said to me: "Death came and looked me in the face; but, thank God! I could look him in the face without fear." Here stands a man face to face with the last enemy in a far more terrible form. To die as a public criminal at the hand of the executioner is very different from lying down to sleep one's self into another world—very different even from falling in the field fighting for all that is dearest to the patriotic heart. Yet the apostle speaks of his fate as calmly as if he were about only to set out on a journey or embark for a voyage. The manner of his death he already knows. A Roman citizen, he cannot be burned, strangled, or crucified, like some of his brethren; and Nero, devil as he is, can do no worse than take off his head and send him to his Saviour. He is ready to be offered as a sacrifice—poured out as a libation; and the time of his departure—the loosing of the hawser—the lifting of the anchor—is at hand, when he shall sail out upon the ocean of eternity.

A good man, dying, said: "I am in the valley, and it is dark; I feel the waters, and they are cold." Not so the apostle. All with him is bright, hopeful, joyous. His last hours are the best of his life. It is not a stoical indifference to suffering, nor a disgust with the world that has misused him, nor a weariness of his holy work. Long since he learned in every state to be content. Some years ago he was in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart and be with Christ, but willing to remain a while in the flesh for the benefit of his brethren. For him, to live is Christ, to die is gain. Living or dying, he is the Lord's, and Christ is magnified in his flesh. At peace with heaven and earth, what has he to fear from either? Knowing whom he has believed, and confident that he is able to keep that which he has committed to his custody, he is ready at the beck of the executioner to go forth from his dungeon, and his last walk on the Ostian Way shall be the triumphal march of the conqueror.